Friday, 1 March 2013

Blockout WIP

I've been working on my blockout for my environment to help me figure out what stuff I want in the scene.

I started in 3DS Max trying to figure out a good layout, but found it very hard to get a sense of scale or really imagine the environment from the player's perspective. As a result it came out pretty flat and boring.

I took the result into UDK and made use of the terrain tool and existing UDK assets to get a better sense of what I wanted. After showing the environment to half a dozen students and getting feedback from them and watching them play through the environment, I made many revisions to the layout and flow of the level. The main areas I improved were:

Allow the player to explore a little more (less "on-rails")

One area needed better guiding to help the player go the right way

Improve the sense of depth in the background

enhance the scale a little more by making things taller

adjust the field of view to allow the player to see more content on screen

many other tweaks

... so now I'm pretty happy with this layout and the content of the scene. None of the assets in the pictures that follow are my own.

I dare say I will make further adjustments, but I don't expect them to be particularly huge changes any longer.